


the_dead_d0nt_dr3am.txt

by roboskin



Category: Mr. Robot (TV)
Genre: M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Post-Season/Series 02, mostly introspective dream fuckery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-12 05:53:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29130603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roboskin/pseuds/roboskin
Summary: Tyrell comes by.He’s standing straight in expensive clothing — clean, no blood on it, or anywhere — jaw clenched, eyes cold. Mask on. Trying to look composed, to cover up for what he did and the way he did it — crying as blood was pouring out of Elliot’s body, the mask glitching.Elliot is starting to know him.“You’re real,” Elliot says. Tyrell looks at him, really, for the first time since he’s entered the room. “Aren’t you?”Tyrell sits down next to him. “I think so,” he says.
Relationships: Elliot Alderson/Tyrell Wellick
Comments: 8
Kudos: 24





	the_dead_d0nt_dr3am.txt

**Author's Note:**

> my friend void finished watching the show a few days ago and it sent me head into The Zone because i never get over anything, ever. ive been wanting to write something following the last season but ive been pretty blocked on writing for the past couple of months and revising some old stuff i did usually helps with that, so i figured id rewrite this instead. i initially wrote this in 2016, right after the season 2 finale aired, and i was still pretty happy with the whole thing, but id just started writing in english back then and there were a lot of grammar and spelling mistakes that kept frustrating me, so. here it is. its basically the same as it was, but better, hopefully.
> 
> a list of content warnings you might want to check out before reading: multiple depictions of someone bleeding out from a bullet wound, implied and referenced child abuse, the general questioning of Elliot’s reality that comes with the entire show, morphine use, fairly graphic depiction of someone throwing up

Blood is pouring out of his body. _It’s real_ , the hole in his stomach says — screams. _It’s real._

“ _Jävlar helvete_ ,” he hears. “Stay with me,” the voice says again. “Stay with me, alright? You’re gonna be fine.” A sob, then. “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry — please forgive me, _please_ , I —”

And then he falls asleep.

* * *

When he wakes up, Angela is there — it's either that or he’s dead. He doesn’t believe in life after death though, and he doesn’t believe death is a condition that allows hallucinations. 

“Elliot,” Angela says. Her voice is soft, and it feels like a thousand years since he’s heard her. “You’re awake.” 

He tries to lift himself up on his arms, which instantly hurts. He looks down to see a stain of blood reddening the white bandage on his stomach. A reminder — an anchor.

“Don’t move,” Angela says. “You need to rest.” He stays in that half-sitting position, the pain stinging still. “Please,” Angela says, then.

Elliot listens.

Angela is holding his hand. He hadn’t noticed it, but it’s there — thin fingers holding his, their grip strong. Grounding. 

They used to play pretend, when they were kids — pretend to be movie characters, pretend they had meet in other ways that their parents both being sick and later dying. Pretend to be ok, alright, fine. Happy. And as happy kids do, Angela would push him around, fight him for fun — Elliot couldn’t always pretend _happy_ , though. Most of the times he’d hold back shivers and tears. Sometimes he couldn’t. And Angela would say _please, Elliot, tell me_ , and he wouldn’t, but Angela would be more careful the next time. 

Now Angela is sitting next to him, in her fine tailored suit. No dirt under her nails — no dead leaves in her air — no mud stains on the hem of her pants. She changed — and he stayed the same. 

Angela is holding his hand, and he’s holding back. In another world, in better times — they could have this in a situation where one of them isn’t recovering from a bullet wound. 

“I’m so sorry, Elliot,” Angela says. “I’m so, so sorry.”

 _I’m sorry_ , Elliot thinks. _I’m sorry too._

He falls asleep again.

* * *

He knows he’s dreaming, somehow. Maybe it’s because he’s standing in that park he knows for sure was destroyed ages ago — but mostly he just _knows_. Feels it. 

He shouldn’t start relying on what he knows, or feels. His senses lie to him more often than not.

He used to come here, when he was a kid. The park. He used to come here with his father and Darlene, when they were kids — sometimes just him and his dad, and then, later, just him and Darlene. There weren’t much options left. 

Mr. Robot is there. Unsurprising. This is where he lives, after all. 

“Hey, kiddo,” he says. Elliot is too tired to try and punch him in the face. “How you doin’?”

“Pretty fucking terrible,” Elliot says. “Thanks to you.”

Mr. Robot sighs. “I’m sorry.” He takes his never-ending, never empty, non-existent pack of cigarettes out from his pocket, and holds it out to Elliot.

Elliot doesn’t move an inch.

“You’re not.”

Another sigh. Mr. Robot takes a cig out for himself, lights it up. Elliot smells it, immediately — it’s funny, what the brain does. “Told you,” Mr. Robot says. “I had to. I couldn’t let anyone get in the way of the plan.”

“Did you tell him to shoot me wrong?” Elliot says. “Or did he fail your order to kill me?”

“Of course not,” Mr. Robot says. “Of course I told him to keep you alive.” He takes a long, long drag, the way his dad sometimes used to, before he was sick. “My job here’s to protect you,” he says. “Don’t you know that?”

“Then why did you disappear?” Elliot says.

Mr. Robot doesn’t answer that.

Fucking liar.

* * *

Elliot opens his eyes, and Angela is still there. She’s wearing the same suit as before, but her hair is loose on her shoulders.

Elliot coughs, and a sting of pain reverbates from the wound in his stomach through his entire body. It doesn’t quite hurt as it probably should, but then he’s never been shot in the stomach before.

“Elliot,” Angela says. Her voice is too soft. Like she’s afraid to break him.

And he wants to say something — ask — _anything_ , but his brain is blurry again, and he doesn’t know _what_ to ask anymore or how, and he’s tired — he’s so, _so_ tired. 

“Why are you there?” Perhaps it _is_ the most important of all the questions right now.

Angela sighs — tired, too. “They — fuck,” she says. She’s been crying — if she’s tried to wipe the make-up tears off her cheeks, there’s still remnants of it on her skin, faded black stripes staining her face. “They told me this was gonna happen.”

“Who?” Elliot says.

“The Dark Army.” She looks like she might start crying again. “Elliot, I’m so sorry, I didn’t want to —”

The end of her sentence, whatever it is, stays stuck inside. 

“What happened?” Elliot asks.

She tucks her hair behind her ear. The skin is red on her wrist, a rash that probably goes further down her arms, too. She’s been scratching her arm, like she did when she was little and adults would ask her about her mom, or just when she was too lost in her own thoughts — not conscious she was doing it, not feeling the burn until after.

“You don’t remember?” she asks.

And he does, he _does_ remember, but he needs to be sure. He needs to hear it, and he needs to hear it from her — he can only hope she’s not in his head, too. 

“You tried to prevent the hack,” Angela says. “You said you would, apparently, you’d been planning on it — you said he — Tyrell had to stop you if you did. He shot you to stop you. On your command. And they told me he was gonna call, they knew this was gonna happen, because you — _you_ told them.”

Mr. Robot is behind her now, lighting up another cigarette. It feels like he should be talking, but he isn’t.

“Was it —” Angela starts. “Was it _his_ plan?”

If only she could see him.

“Yeah,” he says.

Mr. Robot look at him like he’s dying. Is he dying? He’s probably dying.

“I’m sorry,” Angela says again. “I didn’t want this to happen.”

She’s still holding his hand, but his fingers are cold. He’s cold all over, suddenly. “Yeah,” Elliot says. “Me neither.”

Angela bites her lip.

“I don’t think — he knows about him,” she says. “Tyrell, I mean. I don’t think he knows about you — seeing your dad, and becoming him, sometimes.”

“He’s not my dad,” Elliot says.

“Mr. Robot, then,” Angela says.

Mr. Robot scoffs from behind her.

“I don’t think he would have done it, you know,” Angela says. “If he’d known it wasn’t really _your_ decision.”

“Is he there?” Elliot asks.

Angela nods. “Yes.” And so many questions are left, but Angela’s getting up now, ready to leave and leaving him no time. “I told him you were awake,” she says. “He’s relieved.”

“I need to see him,” Elliot says. 

_I need to make sure he’s real_.

Mr. Robot is not real, though. He still sees him. Still smells the smell of his cigarettes.

“I’m gonna get you something to eat,” Angela says, “and then I’ll talk to him. Alright?”

She leaves the room. If it is morphine they got him on, it’s a much stronger dose than what he used to take — he falls asleep before Angela comes back.

* * *

He dreams about Darlene. She looks the age she is now, but with something of her younger self — chipped black nail polish, dark clothes only, fishnets. Her face is covered in black and white pain — a skull, like the one she’d drawn on her face that one night they were both invited at some Halloween party they Elliot didn’t really want to go to.

Darlene is laying on the couch in his apartment, trying to light up a joint with a flame that won’t get out of the lighter. The place feels like the park from before — like a distant memory stored somewhere in the back of his mind, like it was destroyed a long, long time ago. It will be, someday. Maybe soon — who knows.

“Elliot,” Darlene says. “Where are you?” She’s frowning, and the make-up on her face forms little creases between her eyebrows. Her join is finally lit, now hanging between her fingers.

“Dead,” he says. Like it’s the simplest answer in the world.

Darlene laughs at his face. She looks like a scary movie. “You’re not dead, dickhead,” she says. The black nail polish extends to her fingers, hands, arms. She’s all covered up now, black painted neck and black painted hands and black painted ears, her skin shiny and gross like oil, except for the white on her face, the laughing skull. 

“You’re not dead,” she repeats. “The dead don’t dream.”

* * *

Angela comes back with food that tastes like plastic and a bottle of water. He empties it all — barely touches the food.

She asks him what he was dreaming about, and he doesn’t tell her.

* * *

Tyrell comes by.

He’s standing straight in expensive clothing — clean, no blood on it, or anywhere — jaw clenched, eyes cold. Mask on. Trying to look composed, to cover up for what he did and the way he did it — crying as blood was pouring out of Elliot’s body, the mask glitching.

Elliot is starting to know him.

“You’re real,” Elliot says. Tyrell looks at him, really, for the first time since he’s entered the room. “Aren’t you?”

Tyrell sits down next to him. “I think so,” he says. 

Again, Mr. Robot is there — always is, even when he’s not. “How many times do I have to tell you, kiddo?” he says. “This — _this_ is real. I’m not making that up. _You_ ’re not making that up. Thought the bullet wound in your stomach would give you a hint.”

“Elliot,” Tyrell says — an attempt to be firm, formal, cold. But his mask is _glitching_ again, almost off, and his eyes are bare — vulnerable. Elliot can see it, now.

“You _are_ real,” Elliot says.

Tyrell closes his eyes. He looks like he’s going to be sick. He scoffs — a dead laugh. “Yes,” he says.

Elliot closes his eyes, too.

That’s enough for now.

* * *

Elliot expects touch from Tyrell. That’s what he always does. A hand on his shoulder — a hand on his arm — a hand on his hands. Words spoken against his skin as Elliot was bleeding out, half swedish, half english.

The touch never comes.

“Angela told me,” Tyrell says. “About your condition.” And Elliot can tell he’s been thinking about every single word of this sentence before speaking, rehearsed it all in his head. Tyrell is picking at his fingers, his blue tie loose.

Elliot hears sniffing. There’s a tear running down Tyrell’s face, though he instantly wipes it off. A sob finds its way through its voice.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “Elliot, I’m so, so sorry, I — I would have never done it, if I had known. I didn’t want to shot you, I never wanted to hurt you, but you — _not_ you told me and I thought I — I just wanted to —”

He wanted to do what was necessary. That’s what he does. That’s how a man like him makes it to where he was at Evil Corp, and that’s how he gets to this point, too. Doing what’s necessary.

“I love you,” Tyrell says bluntly. Elliot looks back at him, looking for answers. “You know that, right? You have to know it.”

He’s still crying. Elliot is, too. He hadn’t realized.

He closes his eyes, so tight he sees colors.

* * *

He dreams about Angela. Her blond hair is untied, falling in cascades over her shoulders — her blue dress looks like ocean waves. Qwerty’s there, too — out of the water, bigger than he’s supposed to be, and floating in the air around Angela. Flying.

Balloons are tied to Angela’s wrist, pink, purple, yellow — she looks like she’s about to start flying, too.

When Elliot looks down at himself, he sees there’s a hole in his hoodie, an invisible patch of red staining the black fabric. Blood is dripping on the floor, gathering into a puddle.

“You’re bleeding,” Angela says. It’s her prom dress, Elliot realises — she’s wearing her prom dress. He remembers it from taking a picture of her with her date, then boyfriend. A douchebag — the start of a long list of men Angela thought were all she deserved.

He should have said yes. Not that he was better — he certainly isn’t now.

“Yeah,” Elliot says. “I should have said yes,” he says. “Or at least punched his face.”

“What?”

“Your prom date,” Elliot says. “He was making you uncomfortable. I should have punched him in the face.”

Angela laughs. “What are you talking about, Elliot?”

He looks around, and the sky is pink — down: the ground is red. Qwerty comes closer, floats down to smell the puddle of blood on the floor the way a dog would.

“Can you talk?” Elliot asks him.

Angela answers. “Why would he talk?” she says. “He’s a fish.”

“He’s flying.”

Angela points at the blood, the balloons following the movement of her arm. “You’re still bleeding,” she says.

“I’m dying,” Elliot says. “I’m dead,” he corrects.

She smiles — a soft, warm smile that Elliot hasn’t seen on her in what feels like years. “You’re not dead, Elliot,” she says. “The dead don’t dream.”

* * *

“You can’t say that,” Elliot says.

Tyrell looks back at him, confusion on his face. “What?”

“What you said right before,” Elliot says. “Before I fell asleep again.”

And Tyrell frowns. “Why would you say that?” he asks. “It’s true.”

“No,” Elliot says. He looks away. “You can’t.”

Elliot’s throat tightens.

“You don’t know me. You only know him.”

* * *

Tyrell helps him to the bathroom. 

Morphine or not, the wound burns. That might be because he’s standing up and trying to piss, or maybe too much time has passed and he needs another dose. 

It hits him that he doesn’t know how much time has passed. He’s been falling asleep a lot, but doesn’t know for how long — each time could either be minutes or hours. But everytime he wakes up, someone’s there. Angela, and now — Tyrell. 

Something comes up in his throat, burning. The acid, aggressive taste of his own bile suddenly hits him, and before he can think, he’s bending over and crouching on the floor, throwing up. His throat hurts — and his head, and the wound, and his entire body.

Tyrell helps him back to the bed, afterwards. “I’m gonna get you water and something to eat,’ he says. He comes back with those, and some pills. “For the pain,” he says.

Their fingers brush when Tyrell hands him the bottle and painkillers. Elliot swallows the pills — easy. Familiar. He lays back on the bed. This isn’t so much different from what he used to do, if he manages to forget the context. Get high, lay down. Wait for everything to go away. In a couple minutes, he might be able to do that — forget the context. Forget where he is, about fsociety and Tyrell sitting next to him. Stop trying to save the world or thinking he can do anything good.

Something brushes against the skin of his hand where it’s resting on the mattress. He looks down — Tyrell’s touch is careful, the feeling of his fingertips feather-like against the back of Elliot’s hand. This is different. He doesn’t usually bother with being hesitant. But then — he shot him, so maybe that sets some kind of a new boundary.

Elliot doesn’t move his hand, still.

“Can I kiss you?”

Elliot opens his eyes. He hadn’t realized he’d closed them. “What?”

Tyrell looks away. “No,” he says. “Sorry. Forget it.”

* * *

He dreams about Tyrell. He’s standing in the middle of that road in Coney Island, facing the Ferris wheel, matching the decor — all greys and blues in a grey and blue scene, his shape blending into the sky.

“It’s going to rain,” Tyrell says. His face is the same as usual, but softer. Less tension.

Elliot expects him to pull out a gun. Turn into a monster. Shoot him, kill him, turn him into a puddle of blood and flesh and guts. The idea isn’t even that repulsive, somehow — at least, whatever this is would end. At least, he wouldn’t have to wage all those wars anymore. 

Tyrell doesn’t pull out any gun. Doesn’t turn into a monster. He’s looking up at the sky.

“I’m dead,” Elliot says. He means to tell him something else, but it’s gone before he can put it into words.

Tyrell looks down at him. “Sweetheart,” he says. “You’re not dead,” he says, and he holds him. Elliot doesn’t know when he started crying, but then, he’s dreaming — it could be anytime, it could be anything. Things never really make any sense.

Tyrell holds him, and Elliot holds back.

“The dead don’t dream,” Tyrell says.

It starts to rain.

* * *

“It’s going to rain,” Tyrell says.

He’s sitting on the side of the bed, staying close to Elliot. Holding his hand. _Warm. Real._

Elliot holds back.

“What’s gonna happen, now?”

Tyrell doesn’t look him in the eye, face still turned up the window, eyes so fair they look like glass. “I don’t know,” he says.

“Did people die?”

“I don’t know.” 

Perhaps it’s better neither of them know, for now. Elliot might have preferred it if Tyrell _had_ known, if he’d said _no, nobody died, nobody’s gonna die, everything will be ok_ , but he probably wouldn’t have believed him, as much as he’d want to.

He saw him, that time he dreamt about the future he wanted — he saw Tyrell. Maybe because at the time, there was a very real possibility that Tyrell was dead, and that it was Elliot’s fault, and that wasn’t acceptable. Mostly, it was Elliot wondering what it would be to have him around, in a better world. And he can’t have this — not now, possibly not ever — but Tyrell is there, holding his hand, making no sense.

“I thought about what you told me,” Tyrell tells him. “And I don’t think it’s true.”

“What?” Elliot says.

“What you told me about — how I couldn’t love you,” he says. “Because I’ve only seen the other you. But he’s part of _you_ , and — I think I _do_ know you. Both parts. And I know — I’m sure — that I do.”

When Elliot closes his eyes, he sees grey and blue clouds and grey and blue eyes — and a Ferris wheel — and a future that he wanted to be good. Like the dream he just woke up from, and like a memory, but not quite.

“Elliot?”

Tyrell still isn’t looking at him.

“Can I kiss you?” he says.

And Elliot follows his eyes, looking by the window too. From where he is, there’s nothing he can see besides the sky, heavy clouds looming over the city. “Yes,” Elliot says. “Okay.”

Tyrell kisses him — soft, gentle, not even on the mouth. Elliot crushes his fingers between his own and Tyrell is kissing him, _making no sense_.

It starts to rain.

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/robomori) and [tumblr](https://roboskin.tumblr.com)!


End file.
